When State Rules, Church Dwindles

Yigal Schleifer

ISTANBUL, TURKEY -- On a recent Sunday at Aya Triada, the largest Eastern Orthodox church in Istanbul, a priest in a bejeweled white robe with gold trim leads the services in the incense-scented church. The walls of the 120-year-old sanctuary are lined with delicate icons, the ceiling painted with colorful frescoes depicting scenes from the Bible.

As the bearded priest chants in Greek, his voice echoes throughout the domed chamber. His chanting, though, goes mostly unheard. Sitting in the pews are barely more than a dozen gray-haired congregants, along with a tourist whose camera flash keeps going off during the service.

"Today we had a mass, but you see - there are not many people here. That is our situation," says the priest, a church leader known as Metropolitan Herman of Tranopolis, with a shrug of his shoulders.

It's not only the situation at Aya Triada, but citywide and in predominantly Muslim Turkey as a whole. Despite a 1,500-year history in Istanbul - and presiding over some 250 million believers worldwide, stretching from Russia and Romania to Greece and the United States - the Orthodox patriarchate tends a rapidly dwindling flock at home.